When Ron Eisenberg’s Great News kitchenware store and cooking school closed in 2015 after 38 years, the 75-year-old pharmacist-turned-retailer went through what he calls “a grieving process.” Amazon and online competition forced him to shut down the Pacific Beach institution where customers became friends and cooking became community. “I was bored,” says Eisenberg, now 85, […]

From unrefrigerated eggs on grocery shelves to three-hour coffee dates that somehow don’t derail the entire economy, my year in Mexico shattered every assumption I had about how daily life “should” work. Picture this: I’m standing in a Mexican grocery store, staring at a wall of eggs sitting unrefrigerated on a regular shelf, right next […]